Musk’s Starlink Blocks Russian Troops’ Internet Access at Ukraine’s Request
Paul Sonne and Maria Varenikova
Paul Sonne reported from Berlin, and Maria Varenikova from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Russian troops fighting in Ukraine have reported losing their Starlink satellite internet, according to Russia’s pro-war military bloggers, after the SpaceX tycoon Elon Musk acted on a Ukrainian request to curtail access to his network, which Russian soldiers had been using illicitly.
The Starlink cutoff, which the bloggers began noting this week, is the latest twist in a nearly four-year-old war that has been dominated by an unyielding race for technological supremacy and that has redefined what it means to fight a modern conflict.
How seriously the change will affect Russia’s forces is not clear. But Russian military bloggers who track the country’s armed forces were reporting frustration and communications problems on the front, where Moscow’s soldiers for years had used smuggled Starlink equipment to gain access to the internet.
“It’s too early to see what the net impact will be, but judging from Russian complaints, it is already having an effect,” said Michael Kofman, an expert on the Russian military and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
A Russian blogger writing anonymously under the name Military Informant in the Telegram messaging app said that both the Starlink connections on Russian drones and Starlink satellite internet communications for troops at the front had been disrupted. Though Russian forces have only recently started using Starlink for some drones — the crucial weapon of this war — Ukrainians have feared it would become standard practice.
The blogger warned that the change could set the Russian force back “a couple of years” to outdated technologies like wired internet, Wi-Fi and radio communications.
“The Starlink saga has created a serious breach in communications, which the enemy may attempt to exploit,” Colonelcassad, a channel run by the Russian pro-war blogger Boris Rozhin, posted on Thursday.
The channel noted that there were no field internet alternatives that work as well, and while there were ways for Russian troops to bypass the Starlink blockage, “it will take some time.” Units relying on Starlink would also require time to bring high-speed internet to the front via other methods.
After Starlink was cut off, Mr. Musk wrote on X on Feb. 1: “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked. Let us know if more needs to be done.”
For years, while Ukrainian troops have had official access to Starlink, Russians have been evading export restrictions to smuggle the U.S. firm’s satellite internet devices into the country and send them to the front.
But in recent months, Ukraine had noticed that Russia’s use of the satellite internet network had gone beyond simple communications connectivity for troops at the front. Russia had begun equipping drones with Starlink, the Ukrainians say, making them better at targeting and more resistant to jamming.
At the heart of the war’s technological competition has been a quest for ever superior drones and robots, as well as a race for more impenetrable communications links to control them.
The possibility of an onslaught of more powerful Starlink-enabled Russian drones caused alarm in Kyiv, which is already under a brutal Russian campaign to take out the heat and electricity during one of the coldest winters in years.
Concerned by the developments, Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, contacted SpaceX last month. As a result, the U.S. firm blocked access to Starlink in Ukraine except for terminals registered and verified by the government.
Ukraine has been keeping a “white list” of permitted Starlink terminals, essentially locking out contraband Russian devices used by Russian soldiers on the front. But the move also temporarily locked out many civilian and military users in Ukraine who still needed to register and, in some cases, were awaiting approval.
Mr. Fedorov celebrated the Starlink move in a post on X on Thursday, noting that the new system was working and that Ukraine was continuing to verify and register terminals rapidly. He thanked the SpaceX chief and said the move was “delivering real results.”
“We are working very closely with your team on the next important steps,” Mr. Fedorov replied to Mr. Musk on X this month. “Thank you for standing with us. You are a true champion of freedom and a true friend of the Ukrainian people.”
The development was an early victory for Mr. Fedorov, a 35-year-old former tech entrepreneur who took over as defense minister last month after rising through the ranks in wartime Ukraine by understanding the intersection of technology and warfare.
Starlink’s parent company, SpaceX, did not respond to a request for comment on Thursday.
In addition to the new verification measures, Starlink terminals operating on the territory of Ukraine are also being subjected to a speed limit of approximately 75 kilometers per hour (46.6 miles per hour), meaning connectivity for fast-moving weaponry would be interrupted.
Mr. Kofman said the aim of the Ukrainian military in turning to Starlink had been twofold. The required registration for terminals in Ukraine, he said, “will force Russian forward units to reorganize communications,” an advantage for Ukraine. Limiting the Starlink velocity, he said, is meant “to deny Russia the ability to use it on long-range strike drones.”
He said Russia could still turn to alternative communications, like the ground internet, fiber-optic cables, Wi-Fi bridges and extenders that forces used before relying on Starlink.
Moscow has launched recent attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine as a form of pressure, analysts say, as negotiators from Russia and Ukraine meet in Abu Dhabi for peace talks orchestrated by the United States.
Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Moscow’s military has struggled to put in place a secure and reliable system of battlefield communications, so units have, at times, relied on Starlink for coordination on the front. Russia is racing to put up its own equivalent satellite network, but so far it remains under development.
Without Starlink access, “the enemy has not only a problem, the enemy has a catastrophe,” Serhiy Beskrestnov, an adviser to Mr. Fedorov, wrote on Thursday in a Facebook post.
On the Ukrainian side, he said, there are problems with those who have not registered quickly enough for Starlink, noting that the processing was ongoing. Tetiana Chornovol, a commander of a drone unit, wrote in a Facebook post that two teams had been left without communication, adding, “Starlinks still not working, despite all data sent to the whitelist.”
Russia’s vocal cohort of pro-war military bloggers began detailing how the loss of Starlink was rattling Russian units on Wednesday, after Starlink suddenly required that they register for access. Initially, some bloggers said they thought the outage was temporary, but it soon became clear that it was a coordinated effort directed by Ukraine.
In the face of the Starlink outage, Russian units have turned to traditional radio communications and other means of coordinating. Some have installed fiber-optic cables to bring landline internet to the front as a backup, Russia’s military bloggers reported.
Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, has detailed plans to launch its own satellite internet operation in low-earth orbit as an alternative to Starlink. Production of the satellites is set to begin this year, with a launch planned for next year, Roscosmos’s general director, Dmitri V. Bakanov, told the state news agency Tass last month.
Aleksei A. Zhuravlev, the first deputy chairman of the defense committee in Russia’s lower house of Parliament, said that Russia must seek alternatives to Starlink.
“It’s important to understand that relying on anything Western in the current situation is overly presumptuous,” Mr. Zhuravlev told the Russian news outlet Gazeta.ru. “Even though we’re currently in active negotiations with the U.S., that doesn’t stop them from becoming our adversary — and Musk’s actions clearly demonstrate this.”
Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Kyiv, Ukraine.
Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.
Maria Varenikova covers Ukraine and its war with Russia.
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JB full confession: I did not understand all the technical aspects mentioned in the above article.
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